Alimony – alimentatie in Dutch – is the financial support one family member owes another once a relationship ends. In the Netherlands the rules are laid down in Book 1 of the Dutch Civil Code (Burgerlijk Wetboek) and are applied by the family courts on two questions only: what does the person entitled to support need, and what can the other party afford to pay? Fault plays no part. Who left whom, and why, is in almost every case irrelevant to the outcome.
This guide explains how alimony works in the Netherlands in 2026: the two forms it takes, how each amount is calculated, how long the maintenance period runs under the rules that came into force on 1 January 2020, when an existing arrangement can be changed, and what can be done when payment stops. It is written for anyone facing a divorce in the Netherlands, including internationals whose family situation crosses a border.
Two forms of alimony under Dutch law
Dutch law distinguishes child maintenance or child support (kinderalimentatie) from spousal alimony, also called partner maintenance or spousal support (partneralimentatie). Both rest on the same two pillars – need and financial capacity – but they have separate statutory bases, separate calculation methods and very different durations. In practice the court will usually decide both in the same divorce proceedings, which is why they are often confused. Legally they are two distinct obligations, and one can exist without the other: alimony for a former partner is separate from child support, which is intended for the children’s expenses.
| Child maintenance | Spousal alimony | |
|---|---|---|
| Owed by | Both parents, and in some cases a stepparent | The former spouse or registered partner |
| Legal basis | Articles 1:392, 1:395, 1:395a and 1:404 Civil Code | Articles 1:157 and 1:158 Civil Code |
| Maintenance period | Until the child turns 21 | As a rule a maximum of five years |
| Depends on marriage? | No – it follows parenthood, not the relationship | Yes – only after marriage or a registered partnership |
| Income tax | Not deductible | Deductible for the payer, taxed for the recipient |
One point catches unmarried couples by surprise: there is no spousal alimony after cohabitation. If you lived together without marrying and without entering into a registered partnership, neither of you can claim support for yourself, however long the relationship lasted, unless you agreed otherwise in a cohabitation agreement. Child maintenance, by contrast, is owed regardless of whether the parents were ever married.
Child maintenance: child support in the Netherlands
Who has a legal obligation to pay
Under Article 1:404 of the Civil Code both parents must contribute, in proportion to their means, to the costs of the care and upbringing of their minor children. The legal obligation attaches to parenthood, not to the relationship between the parents, and it is not extinguished by the fact that one parent hardly sees the child. For children aged 18 to 21 the obligation continues in a slightly different form under Article 1:395a: parents must pay support towards the costs of living and study of these jongmeerderjarigen, and at that age the young adult can claim the contribution in their own name. A stepparent who is married to or in a registered partnership with the parent, and whose household the child belongs to, can also become liable under Article 1:395 for the duration of that marriage or partnership.
Calculating child maintenance
The Dutch courts calculate child maintenance according to the guidelines of the Expert Group on Maintenance Standards, published annually and known in practice as the Trema report. The calculation runs in three steps.
- The need of the child. The starting point is the net family income before the separation, translated into a monthly cost of the child using the tables of the national budget institute Nibud. The underlying principle is that a child should not carry the financial consequences of the separation.
- The financial capacity of each parent. Each parent’s net disposable income is reduced by a statutory allowance for their own basic living costs; a fixed percentage of what remains counts as capacity to pay. The cost of the child is then divided between the parents in proportion to their respective financial capacity.
- The care discount. The parent with whom the child does not principally live incurs costs during contact days. That is taken into account as a zorgkorting, a percentage deducted from the calculated contribution according to how many days a week the child is in that parent’s care.
We have set out the calculation, including the tables and a worked example, in our detailed guide to calculating child maintenance in the Netherlands.
When child maintenance ends
The obligation ends when the child reaches the age of 21. It can end earlier if the child becomes financially independent before that age, and it can be reduced or increased in the meantime if the income of either parent changes materially. It does not end because the paying parent has lost contact with the child, and it is not affected by a new relationship of either parent – although a new partner’s income can indirectly influence the capacity calculation.
Spousal alimony: partner maintenance
When does an entitlement to spousal alimony arise?
Article 1:157 of the Civil Code allows the court to award spousal maintenance to the former spouse who does not have sufficient income to support themselves and cannot reasonably be expected to acquire it. Two conditions must therefore be met at the same time: the applicant must have a need, and the other party must have the financial capacity to pay maintenance. If either is missing, no alimony is owed. The same rules apply on the dissolution of a registered partnership; the Anglo-American categories of temporary, rehabilitative or permanent alimony have no counterpart in Dutch law.
Need is judged by reference to the standard of living during the marriage, not by reference to a subsistence minimum. One of the spouses may have worked part-time for years so that the other could build a career; such a spouse is not expected to become self-supporting overnight. Equally, the court does expect genuine effort: an ex partner who could work but does not may find their need assessed on the income they are capable of earning rather than the income they actually receive.
Calculating alimony: need and ability to pay
In practice the courts start from a rule of thumb developed in the case law of the courts of appeal: the need of the former partner is set at sixty per cent of the net family income during the marriage, after deduction of the costs of the children. That figure is then tested against the applicant’s own financial situation and against the payer’s capacity, which is calculated after child maintenance has been provided for – child maintenance always takes priority over spousal support.
A final check, the jusvergelijking, compares what each of the former spouses is left with. Alimony should not put the receiving party in a better financial position than the paying party. Where the calculation would produce that result, the amount is reduced accordingly.
How long spousal alimony lasts: the maintenance period
The Partner Maintenance Reform Act (Wet herziening partneralimentatie) came into force on 1 January 2020 and shortened the maintenance period substantially. For divorces from that date, the main rule is that alimony runs for half the length of the marriage, with a maximum of five years.
Three exceptions extend that period, and where more than one applies, the longest term governs:
- Young children. If the spouses have a child together who has not yet reached the age of 12, alimony continues until the youngest child turns 12.
- A long marriage close to retirement. If the marriage or the registered partnership lasted more than 15 years and the person entitled to maintenance will reach the Dutch state pension age (AOW) within 10 years, payment runs until that pension age is reached.
- A long marriage, recipient born on or before 1 January 1970. If the marriage lasted more than 15 years and the recipient will reach state pension age more than 10 years from now, the term is 10 years. This is a transitional provision and it lapses in 2027, so it is only relevant to divorces filed before then.
Extending the maintenance period
The statutory term is not absolute. Under Article 1:157(5) of the Civil Code the court can set a longer period where ending alimony on the ordinary date would, because of exceptional circumstances, be so far-reaching that it cannot in fairness be demanded of the person entitled to it. Serious financial hardship, ill health or an age that makes a return to work unrealistic are the situations in which such an extension is granted. The application must be lodged before the running term expires; once it has lapsed, the entitlement is gone.
Divorces before 1 January 2020
The new rules have no retroactive effect. If alimony was determined or agreed before 1 January 2020, the old regime continues to apply: a maximum of twelve years, or, for a marriage of no more than five years without children, a term equal to the length of the marriage. Arrangements from before 1 July 1994 are governed by rules that are older still. Anyone divorced under the twelve-year regime who is approaching the end of that term should take advice in good time, because an extension must be applied for before the period expires.
Can alimony be excluded in a prenuptial agreement?
No. Under Article 1:158 of the Civil Code, spouses can only make binding agreements about spousal maintenance in connection with the divorce itself. A clause in a prenuptial agreement (huwelijkse voorwaarden) purporting to waive maintenance in advance is not enforceable. Prenuptial agreements do determine how the assets are divided, and that division influences the calculation, but they cannot switch off the maintenance obligation.
Indexation: the annual increase in alimony
Alimony amounts are adjusted by law every year on 1 January. Article 1:402a of the Civil Code provides for statutory indexation at a percentage fixed annually by the Minister of Justice and Security on the basis of wage developments. The increase is automatic: it applies whether or not the maintenance order mentions it and whether or not either party takes action. The only way to escape it is to have excluded indexation expressly in a maintenance agreement. In practice a significant proportion of arrears consists of nothing more than years of unclaimed indexation.
Alimony and income tax
Spousal alimony is deductible for the payer as a maintenance obligation in box 1 of the income tax return, although the rate at which the deduction is granted has been capped in recent years and is now close to the basic rate. For the recipient it is taxable income in box 1, which means the net amount received is materially lower than the gross figure in the court order. A lump sum payment that buys out spousal support is treated in the same way in the year it is paid, and the lump sum can push the recipient into a higher bracket.
Child maintenance is not deductible. The deduction for the costs of children was abolished with effect from 1 January 2015, and no fiscal relief has replaced it.
Changing or ending alimony
An alimony arrangement is not set in stone. Under Article 1:401 of the Civil Code a maintenance order or an agreement can be varied or withdrawn if it no longer meets the statutory standards because of a change of circumstances – redundancy, a new job, illness, a child moving house, the birth of a further child. It can also be varied if it was based from the outset on incorrect or incomplete information. Variation is not automatic: it requires an application to the court, or fresh agreements between the parties recorded in writing.
The non-variation clause
Parties can agree in a divorce settlement that the amount will not be open to variation, under Article 1:159 of the Civil Code. Such a clause is binding, and it is one of the more common sources of later regret. It can be set aside only under Article 1:159(3), where a change of circumstances is so radical that holding the other party to the clause would be contrary to standards of reasonableness and fairness. That threshold is high, and an ordinary drop in income does not meet it. Importantly, a non-variation clause cannot validly be agreed for child maintenance.
Automatic termination
Spousal alimony ends by operation of law under Article 1:160 of the Civil Code when the person entitled to it remarries, enters into a registered partnership, or lives with another person as if they were married. The last of these is heavily litigated: the case law requires an affective relationship of some permanence, a shared household, mutual care and cohabitation. Once the provision applies, the entitlement is gone permanently – it does not revive if the new relationship ends. Alimony also ends on the death of either party, subject to any provision made in a divorce settlement.
When alimony is not paid
A maintenance order is an enforceable title. If payment stops, a bailiff can attach wages, a bank account or other assets without further proceedings. There is also a public route: the National Maintenance Collection Agency (Landelijk Bureau Inning Onderhoudsbijdragen, LBIO) will take over collection of both child maintenance and spousal maintenance free of charge for the recipient, provided there are arrears of at least one month that are not older than six months. The LBIO charges its costs to the person in arrears, which makes non-payment considerably more expensive than payment.
Where the shortfall is genuinely the result of a fall in income, the right response is an application to vary under Article 1:401 rather than simply paying less. Unilaterally reducing payments does not reduce the debt; it accumulates arrears, with interest.
Cross-border alimony
Alimony frequently crosses a border: one party moves abroad, or the family was international from the outset. Within the European Union, jurisdiction, recognition and enforcement of maintenance decisions are governed by the Maintenance Regulation (Regulation (EC) No 4/2009), which as a rule allows the creditor to bring proceedings in the country of their own habitual residence and enables a decision given in one Member State to be enforced in another without an intermediate procedure. The applicable law is determined by the 2007 Hague Protocol, which likewise points in principle to the law of the country where the person entitled to maintenance habitually resides.
The practical consequence is that a move abroad does not end an alimony obligation, and that in an international family it is worth establishing at the outset which court has jurisdiction and which law applies. Those two questions frequently decide the amount more than any calculation does. Our guide to divorce in the Netherlands sets out the wider procedure of which the alimony decision forms part.
Frequently asked questions about alimony
How does alimony work in the Netherlands?
Alimony is awarded on the basis of need and ability to pay, never as a penalty. The court establishes what the child or former partner needs, what the paying party can afford, and fixes a monthly amount. Child support runs until the child is 21; spousal maintenance as a rule for half the length of the marriage, with a maximum of five years.
Am I entitled to spousal maintenance?
Only if you were married or in a registered partnership, and only if you cannot support yourself from your own income and cannot reasonably be expected to do so. There is no entitlement to receive spousal maintenance after unmarried cohabitation, unless a cohabitation agreement provides for it.
Can alimony be bought out in a lump sum?
Spousal alimony can be settled by a lump sum payment if both parties agree. It ends the monthly obligation, but it has significant income tax consequences in the year of payment for both sides and should not be agreed without calculating the net effect. Child support cannot be bought out.
Does alimony stop if my ex partner has a new relationship?
Spousal alimony ends by law if your ex partner remarries, enters a registered partnership, or lives with someone else as if married. A new relationship that does not meet those criteria does not end the obligation, although it may be relevant to a variation application. Child support is not affected.
How much does an alimony procedure cost?
That depends on whether the amount is agreed or contested. Where the parties reach agreement, the calculation and the divorce settlement can be dealt with in a limited number of hours. Contested proceedings before the family court, and any appeal, cost more. We give a fee estimate at the first meeting, once we know which of the two situations applies.
Advice from our divorce lawyers
Alimony decisions run for years and are difficult to reverse, particularly where a non-variation clause is involved. A calculation that is a few hundred euros out per month becomes a substantial sum over a five-year maintenance period. The family lawyers of Law & More advise and litigate on child maintenance and spousal maintenance, including international cases, and work from our offices in Eindhoven and Amsterdam.
Would you like your situation calculated and assessed by a family lawyer? Arrange an intake meeting at our office in Eindhoven or Amsterdam, or read more about our family law practice.
